The Scientific Assessment of School Performance: SATs and Exams

The Scientific Assessment of School Performance: SATs and Exams

Like other parents and grandparents, I am concerned that if the Government
removes the Standard Assessment Test (SAT) from schools, then parents –
who, after all, pay for their children’s education – will no longer
have an objective means of determining if their local school is performing
its duties properly.

Children will meet the external examination
system in the form of the GCSE and other exams in Year 11 anyway – but by
then it may be too late to make up for lost time.

Many schools do object
to the need for SATs. They feel that such tests are a slight on their
ability to provide an excellent education. Unfortunately, these schools
are often selective in their intake or benefit from being located in a
well-off catchment area. However, there are a large number of other
schools which need help and the closer monitoring of their performance
than the infrequent OFSTED inspections. Some of these less successful
schools would similarly prefer that the SATs be scrapped. But for
different reasons. These schools feel that they cannot really improve and
the curriculum makes it harder to perform even satisfactorily. There are
local schools to where I live that have had a similar observation about
their unsatisfactory arrangements for assessments made by OFSTED over two
visits. How many years do these schools have to improve?

Even well established
examinations like the GCSE have problems assessing the candidates, so it
is no wonder that if assessment is reduced to an internal audit then the
results will be suspect if not worthless.

The Government is
rightly concerned that there is a lack of scientists in Britain. So why
are they preparing to scrap the SATs? The Standard Assessment Test does
provide the scientific data to enable pupils’ progress and the performance
of the school to be monitored throughout the child’s long years in
education. Surely, it’s not just because of the fiasco this year with
marking the tests?

As a former moderator
for London University and a teacher who has spent several years in almost
fifty schools as a supply teacher, I can assure you, that being examined
and tested regularly is welcomed by nearly all pupils. Maths, science and
foreign language teachers often carry out tests.

"He's a real teacher,
he tests us and cares for our progress" is a typical response to an
enquiry about the ability of a teacher. If pupils are stressed it is more
likely to occur when testing and exams are not employed. Testing is used
to find out whether the pupils are making progress on a regular basis. If
there is little testing then pupils may be stressed as exams then become
an unfamiliar experience. Parents worry anyway, but removal of the exams
may resolve their worries for the short term, only to be replaced by
disappointment when their child does not fulfil its capability in the GCSE
or other examination.

If the Government is
proposing to replace the KS3 SATs with a more accurate way of assessing
children's progress then it needs to make sure that the replacement
assessment arrangements are at least equal to or better than the present
system. After all, the present system has produced better GCSE and A level
results.

Yours Sincerely

A. Citizen

A reply to the above letter is published
below

department for
children, schools and families

Thank you for your recent letter, addressed to Gordon Brown, about the
abolition of National Curriculum (NC) tests, sometimes known as SATs. It
has been forwarded to the Department for Children, Schools and Families
for reply as we are responsible for school issues. I have been asked to
reply on this occasion.

I should explain that the NC tests for 7 year olds in Key Stage 1,
which are administered as teacher assessments, and the Key Stage 2 tests
for 11 year olds have not been withdrawn.

The Secretary of State has only announced that we have ended schools'
requirement to run national tests for 14 year olds, with immediate effect.
The current compulsory national tests at the end of Key Stage 3 will be
replaced by improved classroom assessment by teachers and frequent
reporting to parents in years 7, 8 and 9. There will be a stronger focus
on one-to-one tuition and catch-up support for children in the first years
of secondary school. This will be more flexible for schools, more
personalised for individual pupils, and provide more scope for teacher
assessment and professional judgement.

He also announced that we plan to introduce new School Report Cards, as
part of wider changes to strengthen schools' accountability to parents and
the public, raise school standards, and reform pupil testing and
assessment. We will set out detailed proposals on report cards for
consultation with schools, parents and the public by the end of this year,
leading to a White Paper in spring 2009.